Recorded live at Jacobs Music Center in May 2025, this release captures Rafael Payare and the San Diego Symphony in Shostakovich’s monumental wartime symphony — composed under siege in Leningrad in 1941 and famously smuggled out of the city, movement by movement, as the composer and his family fled. The booklet traces that extraordinary history in detail, from the symphony’s frantic completion in evacuation to its legendary 1942 performance by a starving, depleted orchestra inside the besieged city itself.

Following their acclaimed 2022 recording of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11 (Gramophone: “right up there with the best we have”), Payare and the orchestra return to the composer with a work of even greater scale and historical weight — a fitting centerpiece as the ensemble builds international momentum ahead of its 2027 European tour.

San Diego Symphony
Rafael Payare – conductor